Mary Colter Buildings, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Desert View Watchtower

    She was a beautiful free spirit who wanted to be an artist.  He was an ambitious immigrant who got his start washing dishes in New York City.  Together they conquered the American West.  Sounds like the plot of a romance novel?  Yes, but their romance wasn't with each other.  They were business partners.  One was an architect and the other, the founder of the first hotel and restaurant chain in America. If it wasn't a match made in heaven, it was at least one of the most successful combinations of art and commerce in history.

Mary Colter

   Born in 1869, Mary Colter attended the California School of Design in San Francisco after a childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Unlike most young women of her era, she had little interest in settling down to the life of a wife and mother.  Upon receiving her degree in 1890, she took up teaching, one of the few careers open to women. She also continued her studies of art, architecture, and archaeology.
    Beginning in the 1890s, the American Arts and Crafts movement sought to create beautiful and practical objects using a combination of traditional and modern materials. Attracted by an aesthetic similar to her own, Colter became part of that movement. She believed living spaces could be simple and beautiful as well as functional and by the age of thirty she had established herself as an interior designer of some note.

Fred Harvey

    Meanwhile, Fred Harvey was busy building his empire.  After coming to the United States from England as a 16-year old immigrant in 1869, he had tried his hand at various business.  Restaurants attracted him the most, no doubt because they presented the biggest opportunity.  The expansion of  railroads across the country had created a need for hotels and eating establishments that could cater to middle class travelers.  In those days, most inns along railway lines offered poor fare and even worse accommodations.  Harvey sought to change all that.  In 1873, he won a contract to create a series of hotels along the Santa Fe railroad.  Unlike later hoteliers, Harvey did not want all his buildings to look alike.  He wanted each one to be unique.

Hermit's Rest

    That's where Mary Colter came in. Although she had no formal training as an architect, she loved the traditional architecture of the Southwest and had studied the buildings methods of the Native Americans there.  She met Harvey in the late 1890s, probably through a friend who knew them both, and joined his company shortly afterwards.  Harvey had just received permission to construct a series of lodgings at the Grand Canyon, a growing tourist destination.  When Harvey died in 1901, his sons took over the company.  They kept Mary on, giving her charge of four buildings in the Grand Canyon complex.
   Another architect might have gone for something impressive, to reflect the majesty of the canyon itself.  Mary knew better.  Nothing was as grand as the canyon.  Instead, she created buildings so natural looking, they could easily be mistaken for the ruins left by earlier inhabitants. The structures blend in.  They don't distract visitors from the natural scenery: they add to it.  Using local rock and adobe, she designed building of timeless beauty. 

Phantom Ranch

   Between 1904 and 1914, she completed four buildings on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon: Desert View Watchtower, Hermits Rest, Lookout Studio, and Hopi House.  In 1987, they became the Mary Jane Coulter National Historic Landmark part of the Grand Canyon Village Historic District.  The district also includes the Bright Angel Lodge (1935) and Phantom Ranch (1922), both designed by Colter.
  No one knows the exact number of buildings Colter designed for the Harvey Company.  In the years following her death in 1958, many were destroyed or renovated beyond recognition.  For years, Colter was nearly forgotten. Fortunately, preservationists began to identify and rescue her remaining structures in the early 1980s.  Today, a total of 11 of her buildings, including the Grand Canyon district, are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Links:
If you want to learn more about Mary Jane Colter, the Grand Canyon River Guides have an excellent short biography at their website. For the full story, Arnold Berke's book Mary Colter: Architect of the American Southwest is the most comprehensive overview of her life and work to date.

Photo Credits:
New Mexico History Museum
U.S. National Park Service
Grand Canyon Historical Society